Words Their Way

1. Words Their Way Stages of Writing / Spelling Development

2. Synchrony of Literacy Development Alphabet Pattern Meaning Reading Stage Grade Range Spelling Stage

3. Words Their WayStages of Development Stage 1 • Emergent Spelling – scribbles to partial alphabetic representation w/o word boundaries • Emergent Reading – Pre-Alphabetic / Logo-graphic - (pretend reading to memory reading) • PreK to middle of grade 1

4. Stage 1: Emergent Stage • Emergent stage is a period of pretend reading and writing. • Pretend to read retelling w/pictures and then rehearsing and reciting well-known poems and jingles to heart. • Pretend writing / Scribbles to partial alphabetic representation w/o word boundaries. Writing is based on language and can be talked about. IKSKP (p.89 4-1) • Gradually acquire directionality.

5. Emergent Writing Evolution p.90-91

6. Humans do not actually speak in words. • Speech is prosodic. • There is no such thing as an isolated phoneme. • Words and phonemes are artifacts of print and do not naturally coincide with acoustic realities such as syllables. Therefore…………………………..

7. Concepts of word and phoneme must be taught. • Both will emerge as children gradually acquire alphabetic principle and coordinate the units of speech with printed units on the page. • By the end of the Emergent Stage, children begin to show some degree of phonemic awareness as they begin to use inventive spellings. p.104 fig. 4-10

8. As alphabetic knowledge is acquired, children will spell using the most salient (outstanding) sounds in the speech stream they write. 1SPNTM (Once upon a time) tangible points of utterance where one part of the mouth touches another or sounds that make the most vibration / receive the most stress P. 92 fig. 4-4

9. In the Emergent Stage, sorts and activities should focus on – 1. Vocabulary growth 2. Phonological Awareness 3. Alphabet knowledge 4. Letter – Sound Knowledge (PHONICS) 5. Concepts of Word in print

10. Such as………………………. • matching word cards to individual words to rebuild familiar rhymes and jingles to foster the concept of word. • Sorting objects, pictures, and some words by concept, beginning sound, and rhyme

11. Only H(aitch), W (doubleyou), and Y (wie) have no beginning – sound association in the letter names and make these letter names often more difficult to learn. • A writing component can be added to many alphabet games to incorporate letter formation which is often a neglected component of early literacy instruction. (This can add a muscle memory connection for acquiring letter-sound knowledge.)

12. Examples of Sorts for the Emergent Stage

13. ? Closed Sort: Animals / Non-animals

14. Animal Picture Sort Bears Dogs Monkeys

15. Food, Clothes and Toys

16. Beginning Sounds b,m

17. M and S is a good choice for students’ first consonant contrast because both letters have continuant sound that can be isolated and elongated without undue distortion. • B and P should not be contrasted in an early sort since they are both articulated the same way and only sound differently since one is voiced and one is unvoiced.

18. Knowing how groups of letters are articulated in the same way helps to explain many of the interesting things children do in their invented spellings. • This knowledge of articulation helps teachers to make decisions about setting up picture / beginning sound sorts so that letter sounds that are much alike are not contrasted in very early letter – sound sorts. • 6th Principle of word study: Begin with obvious contrasts! p. 100 – Fig.4-1

19. Guidelines for beginning sound picture sorts p. 101-102 • As children learn the alphabet and the sounds associated with the letters, beginning sounds will anchor finger pointing more directly to memorized recitation of text indicating the onset of a concept of word in print. • Instructional activities for Emergent Learners p. 106 Table 4-2

20. Children in the Emergent Stage benefit most from a comprehensive approach to instruction and early intervention. • A comprehensive approach includes five essential literacy activities. RRWWT is important so that activities and materials flow together in a logical way. p.106 Table 4-2 • Read To • Read With • Write With • Word Study • Talk With

21. By the end of the Emergent Stage, children will • Learn to segment onset and rime • Show evidence of a Concept of Word • Apply inventive spelling using some letter sound correspondences

22. Stage 2: Letter Name - Alphabetic StageA Period of Beginnings • Letter Name – Alphabetic Stage is the beginning of conventional reading and writing. • They use the sound/letter match to write.. • Initially in this stage, the students spell using beginning and ending sounds. • By the middle of this stage, students begin to use a vowel in each syllable, and begin to spell short vowel patterns conventionally. • They use Finger-pointing to show an acquired concept of word . Beginning – Rudimentary Concept of Word Mid – Late – Full Concept of Word • Recognize some sight words. • Disfluent / Word by word readers who fingerpoint and read aloud to themselves

23. Page 130 Table 5-1 Examples of Letter Name Alphabetic Spelling for stick • Early - SK • Middle – sek • Late – stik • One effective way to manage teacher directed Word Study is to include it as a part of each guided reading group several times a week.

24. Letter Name Alphabetic Spellers • Have both names and sounds for letters • Understand that words can be segmented into sounds and that letters must be matched to these sounds in order • By middle of this stage, students include a vowel and spell short vowels by matching the way they articulate the letter names of the vowels. Ex. /i/ as “e” & /a/ as “a” • By the end of this stage, students have learned to spell many short vowel words correctly.

25. Characteristics of Letter Name – Alphabetic Spelling page 132 What Students What Students What Is Do Correctly Use but Confuse Absent Beginning Middle End

26. Middle and Late Letter Name-Alphabetic Spelling • Differentiation between consonants and vowels • Clear letter sound relationships • Frequently occurring short vowel words.

27. Letter Name Alphabetic spellers rely on what they hear in the letter names and also on how the letters are articulated or formed in the mouth. • Affricatives – (made by forcing air through a small closure at the roof of the mouth creating a feeling of friction) • j, g, ch, dr, tr, and the name for h (aitch) make the affricate sound and are often substituted for each other • Voiced and unvoiced consonant pairs are also often confused by letter-name alphabetic spellers. van / fan brave/BRAF oven / OFN

28. Saying the words aloud as they sort helps students feel the sound differences for affricates and voiced / unvoiced consonant pairs. Voiced and unvoiced consonant pairs should only be contrasted after students have mastered most sounds and need to focus attention on finer sound distinctions.

29. Early letter name –alphabetic spellers have much difficulty separating vowels from consonants. • Medial vowels are described by the state of vocal cords when the sounds are produced. • Long / tense • Short / lax

30. Letter name – alphabetic spellers become adept at fully segmenting words into phonemes. RAIN-ran BOAT-bot LINE-lin • Short vowels are spelled with the letter name closest to the place of articulation of the short-vowel sound they are trying to write. BAT-bet PIT-pot POT- put p. 137 fig.5-2

31. The CVC pattern is introduced in the late letter name – alphabetic stage. (Regardless of how many consonant letters are on either side of the single vowel (cat, clap, clack), one vowel letter in the middle signals the short-vowel sound. )

32. Word Families

33. Short Vowel Family: • a. Sort by pictures that sound alike at the end (-at, -an) • Sort by words that sound and look alike at the end.

34. Closed Picture Sort

35. Letter Name – Alphabetic spellers work through 5 orthographic features following initial consonants. • Short vowels • Consonant digraphs • Consonant blends • Preconsonantal nasals (blends w/ m, n, & ng) • R, L, and W influenced vowels • R-influenced vowels that follow a CVC pattern (car, for) are presented during the late letter name-alphabetic stage and can be compared w/ short vowels • Consonant blends w/ r (fr, tr, gr) are contrasted with r-influenced vowels (from – form, grill – girl, tarp – trap).

36. Digraph sorts and a closer look at blends:

37. Level A vs. Letter – Name Alphabetic Materials

38. Teachers should set as fast a pace as possible during the letter name-alphabetic stage because success in beginning reading depends on learning the basic phonics elements that are covered in this stage.

39. Letter Name – Alphabetic Stage • Scope and Sequence p.140 Table 5-3 • Word Banks and Personal Readers p. 141 • Contrasts for digraphs, beginning & final blends and preconsonantal nasals p. 143-144 • Introduction to r-influenced vowels ar & or • Pace & Sequence of Word Family Study p.145 Table 5-4

40. Word families (phonograms) support students first efforts to analyze vowels because the vowel and the ending letter(s) are presented as a chunk or pattern. • Rime – the vowel and what follows • Onset – what comes before the vowel • 37 rimes can be used to generate 500 different words that students encounter in primary reading materials These chunks will be familiar in chunks in thousands of multisyllabic words.

41. Difficult Consonant Sounds in English for Spanish Speakers p. 151 Table 5-5 • Sample Weekly Schedules for Word Study in the Letter Name – Alphabetic Stage p. 152 Table 5-6 “There are many blends and word families to cover. You might want to create 2- or 3- cycles. Ex. Introduce 2 word families on Monday, another two on Wednesday, and then combine them for several days. Pick up the pace by combining a number of blends or families into one sort (up to 4-5) or by omitting some features. Your observations should dictate the correct pace for your students.”

42. Within Word Pattern Stage and Transitional Readers

43. Stage 3: Within Word Pattern Spelling • Students build on their knowledge of the sound level of English orthography and explore the pattern level. • Students are in the transitional reading/literacy stage. Transitional readers read most single-syllable words accurately and with increasing fluency. They can read some multi-syllable words when there is enough contextual support. • Students in the within word pattern stage use but confuse vowel patterns. They no longer spell boat sound by sound to produce BOT, but BOTE, BOWT, BOOT, or even boat as they experiment with possible patterns for the long –o sound.

44. Within Word Stage (cont.) • The study of prefixes and suffixes is explored in the next stage, syllables and affixes. Increasingly, however, the reading and language arts content standards of many states are requiring that students are developmentally in the Within Word Pattern phase. • These words should be explored first as vocabulary words students encounter in their reading, and are not treated as spelling words until students know how to spell the base word on which they are built. • The sequence of word study in the Within Word Pattern stage begins by taking a step back with a review of short vowels as they are compared with long vowels then shifts to common and then less common and r-influenced long vowel patterns.

45. By the middle of Within Word Pattern, Students are spelling many of the most common long vowel patterns correctly in high-frequency words, but less common and “other vowels” (ambiguous vowels and r-controlled vowels) will pose problems. • By the end of Within Word, students will have mastered nearly all the long vowel patterns on the inventory.

46. Characteristics of Within Word Pattern Spelling p. 172 • During Within Word Stage, students begin to recognize patterns and chunks to decode unfamiliar words. Fluency increases as transitional readers begin to read in phrases, pausing at the end of sentences, and they read with greater expression

47. Homophones are rich fodder for vocabulary development in the Within Word Pattern stage • Mastery of vowels is complicated by : p.175 • More vowel sounds that letters to represent them so vowel pairs and silent vowel markers are used • Most vowel sounds are spelled a number of ways • There are many types of vowel sounds: long, short, r-influenced, diphthongs, and other ambiguous vowels that are neither long nor short as well as l, r, and w influenced vowels. P. 175 & 180 Tables 6-1 & 6-2

48. Despite the complexity of vowels, by the end of the within word pattern stage, students have a good understanding of vowel spelling patterns. • Knowledge of vowel patterns is a prerequisite to the examination of the way syllables are joined during the next stage of development, the syllables & affixes stage. • In addition to sound and pattern, the meaning layer is critical to learning vowel patterns as with homophones and homographs.

49. What about high frequency words? • A number of spelling programs feature high-frequency or high-utility words and focus on a small core of words students need the most such as said, because, there, etc. • In many cases, this reduces spelling to a matter of brute memorization and offers students no opportunity to form generalizations that can extend to the reading and spelling of thousands of unstudied words. • Many of these high-frequency words do not follow common spelling patterns, but can be included in within word pattern sorts as oddballs. Ex. Said is usually examined with other words that have the ai pattern, such as paid, faint, and wait. It becomes memorable because it stands alone in contrast to the many words that follow both the sound and spelling pattern feature. • Most of the top 200 most frequently occurring words according to Dolch and Fry are covered by the end of the Within Word Pattern Stage. High-Frequency Words p. 181-182

50. Guidelines for Creating Word Sorts • Sorts that contrast sounds and patterns are the key to effective word study in this stage. Possible contrasts are suggested in Table 6-2 (pages 180-181) and lists of words in Appendix E.